


A Conversation in Writing

by Setcheti



Series: Conversations [6]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 07:09:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5575993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setcheti/pseuds/Setcheti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. McCoy had put up the list with the best of intentions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Conversation in Writing

Leonard McCoy was a very harried doctor at present, and had been for weeks now. The hospital was full of casualties, of course, and that on top of the usual flow of regular patients coming in, and he’d felt duty-bound to help out as much as he could. But his main concern was his friend, his captain, Jim Kirk, and taking care of Jim was really wearing on him more than anything else.

First off, Jim had been dead. Really, actually dead. And even after McCoy’s long-shot experiment had paid off and brought him back, he’d still had to be treated for fatal levels of radiation exposure. The treatment had taken two weeks and re-saved his life, but if it hadn’t been for the experimental serum McCoy had used the treatment would have probably killed him again all by itself. So Jim was alive, and possibly slightly more resistant to damage than he’d been before dying, but it was still going to take a long time for him to make a complete physical recovery from the whole experience.

In addition to that, Jim’s mental shields were down – a bad situation for any empath, but for one that was already depressed and suffering from a severe case of battle shock it was so potentially dangerous that the Vulcans had stepped in to help, mandating that he had to be at least one room distant from any other patients – they’d ended up using a small meeting room for that purpose, since the hospital was too full to let an actual patient room stay empty – and putting an enameled metal plaque marked with a Vulcan symbol on the room’s door which apparently indicated that there was an injured empath inside.

Because of all of this, and not to mention the 'Fleet-wide conspiracy and ensuing disaster which had culminated in Jim’s temporary death in the first place, McCoy had been just short of draconian about keeping the flow of visitors to the room regulated to a well-controlled trickle. He’d even posted a list beside the door of things those few visitors weren’t allowed to ask – or that he was tired of answering – that also warned them not to go in if they weren’t calm. Because according to the Vulcan who’d brought the plaque and put it up, Jim probably didn’t have any idea his shields were down in the first place, and trying to raise them could hurt him. So, the list. Neatly printed on a sheet of white flexi, because the meeting room didn’t have an embedded digital sign in its door the way the regular patient rooms did.

> **Questions You Need To Stop Asking Me and Shouldn’t Ask Captain Kirk**
> 
>   1. **No, he can’t walk right now.**
>   2. **Yes, that symbol on the door means you can’t go in if you’re upset – his mental shields still aren’t back up.**
>   3. **No, he doesn’t know what’s going on with Starfleet yet. So don’t bring it up with him.**
>   4. **No, he does not have brain damage.**
>   5. **No, you may not ask him what death is like. Go talk to a damned priest.**
> 


McCoy had been pleased with the effectiveness of his sign, until one day he’d come back from a meeting and found a note scrawled at the bottom of the list with a permanent marker.

> **_Dr. McCoy is a bloody idiot and this list is bollocks – except #5, if you ask him that I will personally beam you off the bloody planet and INTO THE HEART OF THE SUN._ **

The doctor was somewhat taken aback by this, to put it mildly. The handwriting wasn’t completely familiar, but he knew who it had to have been and he was perplexed by the idea that someone had gotten into the room while he was gone – they had security in place to keep that from happening! And Mr. Scott had no doubt talked to Jim about all kinds of things he hadn’t needed to be worrying about, and wasn’t McCoy going to find a way to use the engineer as a test subject for something horrible in the very near future because of this…

And then Jim waved to him through the room's partially-covered window to get his attention and raised a questioning eyebrow, and McCoy realized he’d been breaking #2 himself from all the way out in the hall. He forcibly calmed himself back down and went into the room. Jim had very obviously been crying, but he seemed a lot less depressed and he was actually looking McCoy in the eye when he talked to him, which was a big improvement. Turned out all the things they hadn’t been talking about had been the things that were worrying Jim the most, like thinking Pike had died hating him and that everyone still thought he was a traitor. McCoy apologized and wasn’t at all surprised when the apology was immediately accepted – Jim Kirk didn’t really hold grudges, at least not against his friends.

McCoy answered a few questions for Jim after that, and got a hug and a really heartfelt thank you for saving his friend’s life which had made him break #2 in a big way again. He hadn’t realized until that moment that Jim had been unhappy about being saved, and had mistaken everybody’s refusal to talk about what was going on as a sign that none of them cared. Jim hadn’t said that last part out loud, of course, but McCoy had heard it loud and clear. He knew Jim. And he knew Jim’s demons – he saw their handiwork a lot, usually in Sickbay because people who don’t think their own lives have value tend to go balls to the wall when it comes to protecting others.

The way Jim had almost four weeks ago when he’d died saving the ship and San Francisco in general and Mr. Scott in particular. So maybe it shouldn’t really have been surprising that Scott had been the one to sneak in and talk to Jim, after all.

The next day, McCoy was startled when he came into the hospital and several people stopped him in the hallways to ask very pointed questions about the state of his formerly-dead patient’s mental health. He hurried to the meeting room, wondering what could possibly have gone wrong overnight, and his eyes fell on the white flexi by the door. Which now had another list written underneath Mr. Scott’s comment, this one in a much more familiar if somewhat shaky hand.

>   1. _**Yes, I can walk, just not very far. About this far, specifically.**_
>   2. _**Yes, you can still come in if you’re upset. I can handle it.**_
>   3. _**Okay, that one I really don’t want to talk about. But I’d do it all again, regardless.**_
>   4. _**Only according to Dr. McCoy – but he was saying that before, too. Otherwise, no.**_
>   5. _**It’s scary. Next time it shouldn’t be quite so bad, though, because now I know what to expect.**_
> 


McCoy looked in through the window; Jim was asleep, because of course he was. The doctor considered the situation for a moment, then pulled a pen out of his pocket and wrote a note of his own under the second list before heading back off to do his other morning rounds. He was still one very harried doctor, and likely to be that way for weeks or even months to come. But at least now he knew that the patient he'd been most worried about - his recently-dead captain who also happened to be one of his closest friends - really was going to be just fine after all.

> _**Thank you for clearing that up, Jim. And this explains why four people stopped me this morning to ask if you needed a psych eval – I’ll let them know this level of crazy is actually normal for you. Now get back into that damned bed and stay there!** _

 


End file.
